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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22412776">What Could They Think But...?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syntax/pseuds/Syntax'>Syntax</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>50k Challenge Oneshots [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hollow Knight (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>5 Times, Experimental Style, Fluff, Gen, Post-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 14:47:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,352</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22412776</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syntax/pseuds/Syntax</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times the people of Hallownest had no idea what to think of what was going on.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>50k Challenge Oneshots [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1627744</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>186</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>What Could They Think But...?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When suddenly the Infection was no more, the bugs of Hallownest didn't really know what to think of it.</p><p>For so long their dreams had been plagued by bright lights and old songs, orange pus and sweet rot.  If they slept, they would fall ill and be overtaken.  If they stayed awake they would be succumbed by paranoia, fall ill, and be overtaken.  If they stayed in the kingdom, they were doomed.  If they left the kingdom, they would lose their memories.</p><p>There really wasn't any way for them to win.  Nothing to hope for.  No light at the end of the tunnel, save for the old one that screamed and screamed.</p><p>Then suddenly the Old Light was gone, and with it were their coughs and boils and sleepless nights.</p><p>Perhaps the Infection had simply run its course.  Perhaps the bugs of today were immune now.</p><p>Perhaps, they thought, things were finally looking up.</p><p> </p><p>When suddenly a new King came to sit upon the throne, the bugs of Hallownest didn't really know what to think of it.</p><p>The Pale King had disappeared so long ago that to many of the Infection's survivors, he was more myth than memory.  He was a Higher Being, yes, a God, yes, and he possessed a power greater than any mortal bug could ever hope to know.</p><p>But he had vanished when the Infection proved too great for even his greatest plans to hold it back.  And now a small child stood in the City of Tears, gesturing to the Kingsbrand emblazoned on their chest.</p><p>Certainly they bore a resemblance to the Pale King.  <em>Hadn't he and the White Lady had children before the Infection overtook the kingdom?</em>, the bugs were whispering.  Some remembered hearing such a thing second-or-third-hand.  Some bugs swore up and down that there had been announcements.  Some bugs <em>remembered</em> the announcements.  And some bugs claimed there had been nothing of the sort.</p><p>Still, they bore the brand, and they could read the signs the Pale King had left behind for Higher Beings like himself and his kin.  They couldn't speak, but they listened well, and perhaps that was for the best.</p><p>Perhaps, they thought, things could be better this time.</p><p> </p><p>When suddenly communication with Deepnest was re-established, the bugs of Hallownest didn't really know what to think of it.</p><p>Hallownest had never particularly been close with its dark sister, even before the Pale King had bargained Herrah the Beast into eternal slumber.  But evidently there was a new development happening among Deepnest's political circles.</p><p>An odd young spider calling herself Hornet had taken her mother's place as Queen of Deepnest, and she claimed to be the half-sister of Hallownest's new King.</p><p>Certainly there was a resemblance to the new King.  Not many bugs wore masks that wrapped all the way around their heads, and not many masks were of such fine and such pale make.  But while the bugs of Hallownest knew not what to make of this new Queen, their King welcomed the spider warmly into the City of Tears, and the two did seem to be very familiar with each other.</p><p>When Hornet talked (and she did talk), the King listened.  And when the King wrote out his responses, the Queen read.  Reportedly, they spent hours each day communicating in this manner before finally reaching an agreement and parting for their respective homes.</p><p>Within days of Queen Hornet's departure from the City of Tears, spider ambassadors came down from below and claimed they would assist in Hallownest's recovery.  Perhaps, thought the bugs of Hallownest, the two royals really were siblings.</p><p>Perhaps, they thought, the world was not quite so dim.</p><p> </p><p>When suddenly a strange Knight arrived from the Black Egg Temple, the bugs of Hallownest didn't really know what to think of it.</p><p>The Knight was an impossibly shabby thing.  As tall at the head as a fully extended giraffe weevil, their chitin was marred by cracks and punctures that leaked some strange black mass, and they appeared to be completely missing an arm.  Even their nail, longer than most bugs were tall, was in a state of disrepair.</p><p>They were pitiful to look at.  They were worrying to look at.  The bugs didn't like looking at them at all, in fact.</p><p>But the new King came out of the tower they'd claimed in the City of Tears to serve as a de facto palace and took this strange Knight's enormous hand into their own tiny little claws, and the bugs of Hallownest suddenly began to notice the striking similarity this newcomer had to a certain statue in a certain fountain that had stood in the City of Tears since long before the Infection had overtaken the kingdom.  And not only that, but...</p><p>Well.</p><p>Certainly there was a resemblance to the King and Queen.  The odd black carapace, the pale and ornate mask, the grand sweeping horns atop the Hollow Knight's head.  They did not claim a throne for themself as Queen Hornet or the new King did, but merely a spot at the throne's side, guarding the King from any that might harm them.</p><p>Perhaps a third child of the Pale King, the bugs of Hallownest thought.  An elder sibling to the two on the throne, one who had seen the Pale King's rule and the Infection that destroyed it.  Perhaps an elder sibling who could guide their younger siblings to heights their parents had never before seen.</p><p>Perhaps, they thought, there was hope for the future.</p><p> </p><p>When suddenly the Queen returned from her bountiful gardens, the bugs of Hallownest didn't really know what to think of it.</p><p>The Queen that ruled in Deepnest was deeply deserving of the title for sure, and a few of their number remembered the Queen of the bees far off in the Hive near the kingdom's outskirts, but to the bugs of Hallownest the true Queen would always be the White Lady.  The Root from a foreign land, partner of the Pale King and gentle mother of the nation—there was no way the bugs of Hallownest could forget her, especially after she disappeared not long before her husband did during the last few years of the Kingdom's glory days.</p><p>The bugs knew where she was, of course.  Even those among their number who remembered very little else of the Infection remembered that the White Lady had retreated to the Queen's Gardens near the edge of the Kingdom.  She was not quite so like the Pale King in that regard, who had disappeared with the White Palace suddenly and silently with no one to know how or why it had happened.   But just because bugs knew where she was, that didn't mean they could see her.  The path to the gardens had grown notoriously difficult to traverse, and the gardens themselves became even more notoriously difficult once word of a tribe of mantises moving in reached the City of Tears.</p><p>But now, none of that mattered.  The Queen had returned, carried on the back of one of the last Great Knight no less.</p><p>The new King emerged once more from their palatial tower with the Hollow Knight trailing dutifully behind them and greeted their mother with the same open affection that the rest of their family had once received.  They could not talk, and the White Lady could not see, but neither inability prevented the two from sharing a tender embrace in the City's rain.  Nor did such an inability stop the Hollow Knight from greeting their mother in such the same way, or even stop Queen Hornet rushing out from Deepnest a scant few hours later to greet the one parent she did not share with her siblings.</p><p>With the reunion of the new King, the Queen of Deepnest, the Hollow Knight, and the White Lady, Hallownest had a proper Royal Family for the first time in centuries.  The bugs of Hallownest weren't quite sure what to think of it, but they were happy nonetheless to see where this new development would take them.</p><p>Perhaps, they thought, this land can finally start healing.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>haha i have writer's block</p></blockquote></div></div>
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